Dennis Stanworth: A history of crime

Here's a timeline of the criminal history of Dennis Fink Stanworth, who was arrested this week in Vallejo on suspicion of killing his mother.

Aug. 12, 1965: Dennis Fink Stanworth, 22, kidnaps a 20-year-old Richmond nurse at knifepoint as she drives out of the Montgomery Ward parking lot. He rapes her and nearly kills her in Golden Gate Fields parking lot in Berkeley.

Nov. 4, 1965: Stanworth kidnaps a 24-year-old woman near an El Sobrante shopping center, holding an ice pick to her throat. He rapes her and lets her go.

May 13, 1966: Stanworth kidnaps a 17-year-old high school student, bounds her hands behind her back and rapes her on the beach in Point Richmond. He drives her back to her high school.

Aug. 1, 1966: Susan Muriel Box and Caree Lee Collison, both 15, are hitchhiking along a highway in Pinole when Stanworth offers them a ride, and drives them at gunpoint to Point Wilson, overlooking San Pablo Bay. He forces the girls to walk across a field where he sexually assaults them after shooting both in the head.

Aug. 3, 1966: Girls discovered. Collison is alive but in a coma. She dies Sept. 12, having never regained consciousness.

Aug. 3, 1966: Same day bodies are discovered, Stanworth abducts 18-year-old woman from a Pacifica shopping center parking lot, orders her to drive him to his disabled car nearby. There, he pulls out a knife, robs her, ties her up and drives her to a beach where he rapes and tries to strangle her. He leaves her bound, but after he leaves she unties herself and hours later police arrest Stanworth in her car.

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Sept. 29, 1966: A month after confessing his crimes to police -- including that he had sexually assaulted a number of other women -- Stanworth pleads not guilty by reason of insanity to all counts. Contra Costa Superior Court judge orders him examined by two court-appointed psychiatrists.

Nov. 14, 1966: Stanworth changes plea to guilty on all counts as to first-degree murder.

Dec. 2, 1966: After a four-day penalty phase trial, a six-man, six-woman jury decides Stanworth should be executed in California's gas chamber. Stanworth puts up no resistance, and says he welcomes the execution order.

Aug. 20, 1969: State Supreme Court sets aside Stanworth's death sentence, despite his protests that he deserved execution. Citing a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling the year before, the state justices say trial court erred in allowing the prosecution to reject 12 prospective jurors who had voiced objections to capital punishment.

July 1974: New Contra Costa jury sentences him again to death.

1972-1974: State Supreme Court holds that the state's death penalty constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment," and in August 1974 affirms Stanworth's conviction but reduces sentence once again to life with the possibility of parole.

1979: State Parole Board, after several rejections, grants Stanworth a parole date citing his good behavior in prison.

1990: Stanworth is released from prison on parole.

1993: Stanworth is removed from parole oversight but must continue to register as a sex offender.

Jan. 9, 2013: Stanworth contacts Vallejo police and admits killing his 90-year-old mother, who lived in an American Canyon mobile home park.